Emails show W.H. concern over inquiry

White House and Solyndra officials spent weeks this spring discussing a forthcoming Washington Post investigation of President Barack Obama’s visits to clean-energy companies, according to internal administration emails released Friday afternoon.

The officials also repeatedly stressed that politics and campaign donations have nothing to do with decisions to send the president to companies like Solyndra, whose California factory Obama toured in May 2010.

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Still, they expressed concern about where the Post was going with its story, which it eventually published June 25. The story mentioned his trips to Solyndra and clean-technology companies in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada while writing that “the president has prompted questions on Capitol Hill and from industry about the wisdom of his singular strategy and his political ties to some of the companies chosen for federal attention.”

Dave Miller, director of corporate communications for Solyndra, gave the White House a heads-up about the story in an email May 9, warning that reporter Joe Stephens “has been poking at us for several months.”

“He seems to be focused on whether one of our investors used influence to get us the presidential visit and beyond that influenced the DOE in any way,” Miller wrote to Greg Nelson, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. (Miller was apparently alluding to major Solyndra investor George Kaiser.)

“That is not true and we have repeatedly told him that is not the case,” Miller wrote, adding that he had not provided Stephens with requested information about the names of White House staff people that the company had spoken to.

In an email on June 2, Nelson wrote to public engagement office Director Jon Carson and two other White House officials to let them know what the Post was working on, including the fact that the newspaper’s scope included Solyndra and other companies.

“It seems like it is partially inferring that we are rewarding places that have investors that are large donors or that lobby us to visit,” Nelson wrote. He added: “At no time do we look at donor history, and in fact many of the CEOs and companies we visit volunteer that they are Republican (one of the sites in WI POTUS visited has a self-described ‘tea party-sympathizing CEO.’)”

Carson responded: “Thanks for the heads up Greg … And we all know how straightforward this process is and that we actually go out of our way to ignore the politics of these trips, so don’t let this drag you down, you are doing great work.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:26 p.m. on November 11, 2011.